The seventh required the court to be held twice a year, at such place as the Legislature should direct, until the year 1836, and afterwards at the seat of government.

The eighth section prescribed the manner in which the respective tenures of the judges chosen at the first election should be decided that is, as to which should hold for two years, which for four, and which for six years.

Section nine prohibited a judge from sitting in a cause in which he was interested, and provided for the appointment by the Governor of a competent person to sit in the place of a judge so disqualified.

The tenth section provided that the salaries of the judges should not be diminished during their continuance in office.

Sections eleven and fifteen inclusive provided for the organization of circuit courts, and ordained that the circuit judges should be elected in their respective districts, for the term of four years, and should reside in their districts, and that the districts were to contain not less than three nor more than twelve counties.

Original jurisdiction in all matters, civil and criminal, was confered upon the circuit courts, provided that in civil cases the sum in controversy exceeded fifty dollars. These courts were to be held twice a year in each county in the State. The judges were permitted to interchange circuits, and were to receive a compensation, which was not to be diminished during their continuance in office.

Section sixteen established a separate superior court of chancery, with full jurisdiction in all matters of equity, and provided for the election of a chancellor by the qualified voters of the State, for a term of six years, who should be thirty years of age at the time of his election; but it also gave the Legislature the power of conferring equity jurisdiction on the circuit courts of each county in all cases where the amount in controversy did not exceed five hundred dollars; also in all cases of divorce and for the foreclosure of mortgages.

The eighteenth section provided for the establishment of a court of probate in each county of the State, with jurisdiction in all matters testamentary and of administration, in all affairs

pertaining to orphans and in the allotment of dower; in all cases of idiocy and lunacy, and of persons non compos mentis. The judges of this court were to be elected by the qualified electors of the respective counties for the term of two years.

Section nineteen provided for the appointment of the clerk of the high court of errors and appeals, who should hold his office for the term of four years, and for the election of the clerks of the circuit and probate courts, whose respective terms should be two years. Sections twenty and twenty-one provided for a board of police for each county, to consist of five persons, which should have the supervision of roads, highways, bridges, ferries, and of all matters of county police, and prescribed their mode of election and qualifications.

The twenty-second section provided for the election by districts of justices of the peace in each county, and limited their jurisdiction to cases involving not more than fifty dollars.

Section twenty-four authorized the Legislature to establish, from time to time, such inferior courts as might be deemed necessary, and to abolish them whenever it might be deemed expedient.

Such was the status of our judiciary on the adoption of the Revised Constitution of 1832. Let us now turn to the distinguished gentlemen who administered the laws under this new system.

WILLIAM L. SHARKEY.

The professional minds of lawyers and judges may be divided and aptly assigned to two separate and distinct classes, which may be designated respectively the perceptive and the memorative. To one class belong those whose legal knowledge and perception are coterminous with the inscriptions of memory. and consist of a vague medley of garnered precedents and authorities, which must be resorted to and invoked on all occasions when it becomes necessary to grapple with any question of importance. Their knowledge of law is like that of the precocious youth who learned mathematics by committing Euclid to memory without comprehending a single principle involved, or

how a single proposition was proven. To this class usually belong those whose general education is limited, or whose powers of perception have never been whetted by close and continued application, and always those who are naturally deficient in the organs of analysis and abstraction.

The other class comprises those who depend upon their own conscious resources, who combine and embody the principles of law with their own perceptions, and mingle them with the elements of their own judgment. Like Lord Thurlow, they do not inquire so much "how the case was decided," as "why it was so decided." With the first class, law is simply the result of memory an undigested mass, a lurid and confused superficiality, a medley of incomprehensibilities; while with the other class it is an emanation of their own minds, and they speak as authorities themselves. Such was eminently the case with Chief Justice Marshall, whose decisions required no authorities to support them; and such was the character of the judicial mind of William L. Sharkey, who for eighteen years presided in Mississippi as the Chief Justice of her High Court of Errors and Appeals.

In treating of the character of this distinguished jurist, it will be difficult to steer between the Scylla of injustice on the one hand and the Charybdis of adulation on the other. His was a character of which every feature belongs to the domain of greatness, and whose composition is found only in the loftiest spheres of human existence. WILLIAM LEWIS SHARKEY was born near a place called at that time Mussel Shoals, on the River Holston, in the State of Tennessee, during the year 1797. His maternal grandfather, Robert Rhodes, was a native of Germany, from near the city of Cologne, on the Rhine. His father, Patrick Sharkey, was a native of Ireland, and was reared in the vicinity of Dublin. He came to America when a young man, in company with his elder brother Michael, who was afterwards the captain of a Virginia Company in the Continental army during the War of the Revolution; at the termination of which, Patrick found his way to the new and beautiful country between the Cumberland and the Alleghanies. Here he married and settled, and here resided until his family con